Weekend Papers Summary
NEW YORK TIMES
Saturday
• Violence between Israelis and Palestinians continues to increase, with deadly clashes convulsing the occupied West Bank and anti-Israeli protests erupting along Israel’s borders with Arab neighbors Jordan and Lebanon.
• Across the country, businesses and individuals are scrambling to make sense of the abrupt change in federal mask guidelines, which said fully vaccinated people could safely go most places, indoors or outdoors without covering up; related story says the guidance contrasts with the views of many epidemiologists, 80 percent of whom surveyed by the Times said they thought Americans would need to wear masks in public indoor places for at least another year.
• Virginia, Arkansas, Florida, and Maryland are among at least 38 states that have introduced during the past six months bills to protect people’s data privacy, regulate speech policies, and encourage tech competition, a drastic escalation from past years.
• As India battles a horrific surge of the coronavirus, most nearby countries have sealed their borders, and several that had been counting on Indian-made vaccines are pleading for them with China and Russia instead.
• The US government has long run cyberattack war games, but the Colonial Pipeline attack—carried out by a criminal extortion ring and not a hostile state actor, with the goal of holding corporate data for ransom—didn’t fit the traditional mold.
• Britain’s Serious Fraud Office is investigating suspected fraud and money laundering in Sanjeev Gupta’s global metals empire, which ballooned in recent years with the aid of billions in financing from failed firm Greensill Capital.
Sunday
• With violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories back in the news, divisions between the leadership of the Democratic Party and the activist wing have burst into public view, with the latter seeing the conflict as a racial justice issue.
• New voting laws and bills put forward by Republican-controlled legislatures seek new penalties, elevated criminal classifications, and five-figure fines for state and local election officials who make mistakes, errors, or oversteps at the polls.
• As Covid-19 ravages Brazil, experts are working to understand a disturbing trend in which the virus appears to be killing babies and small children at an unusually high rate—so far 832 children five and under have died.
• Only 0.3 percent of the Covid vaccine doses administered globally have been given in the 29 poorest countries, home to about nine percent of the world’s population, but vaccine manufacturers say that will change as they expand production lines.
• Four women who have accused New York governor Andrew Cuomo of sexual harassment received subpoenas to testify under oath, a sign the state attorney general’s investigation into Cuomo’s behavior has entered a critical new phase.
• The University of California will not take SAT and ACT scores into account in admissions or scholarship decisions for its system of 10 schools, which include some of the nation’s most sought-after campuses, after a lawsuit brought by students.
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Weekend
• Front page story reports “The US IPO market, unstoppable for nearly a year, has hit a speed bump—with inflation fears weighing on stocks, investors have shifted away from technology shares, initial public offerings and SPACs.”
• American companies began to rethink their requirements for face masks after federal health regulators relaxed their guidelines this week, with WMT and COST announcing they will no longer require vaccinated workers and shoppers to wear masks.
• DarkSide, the criminal group linked to the cyberattack that recently disrupted US gasoline deliveries, has told hacking associates that it is shutting down after losing access to the infrastructure it uses to run its operation, according to security firms FireEye and Intel 471.
• The UK’s plans to cast off almost all public-health restrictions next month are in peril after a highly contagious coronavirus variant first identified in India sparked new clusters of Covid-19, highlighting the risk of outbreaks even in vaccinated countries.
• Labor shortages and production bottlenecks are weighing down companies as the economy begins to surge, driving up demand for a range of goods, leaving many companies that stand to benefit unable to keep up.
• On the hunt for tax cheats, the Internal Revenue Service is winning court battles to force cryptocurrency exchanges to reveal their customers—big unreported profits on bitcoin, ether, or dogecoin could create problems for many taxpayers.
• Credit cards, auto loans, and other personal loans are growing easier to come by, more than a year into a pandemic that spooked lenders and caused them to tighten lending standards significantly.
• Higher commodity prices are delivering economic windfalls to countries such as Australia and Chile that supply metals vital to the global recovery from the pandemic, though the boom could still mask problems.
• H.O.T.S.: Hydrogen is a more feasible green power source for the aviation world than electric batteries, but deploying it quickly will be difficult; The question isn’t why retail sales missed expectations in April, but how strong they will be in the coming months; Returning demand appears to be creating a supply problem for the hotel industry, and one that is uniquely acute for ABNB.
FINANCIAL TIMES
Weekend
• An escalation of violence in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since the 1967 war and which is home to hundreds of thousands of settlers, would add a dangerous dynamic to the conflict, as would more violence between Jews and Arabs on Israeli streets.
• Cities across Japan are cancelling plans to host athletes before the Tokyo Olympics, leaving competitors with little chance to acclimate and threatening to distort competition at the world’s biggest sporting event.
• Big Read story on inflation reports “Central banks say rising prices are a temporary phenomenon and insist they will not rush to unwind stimulus measures, but new consumer figures give investors a signal of the risks that could lie ahead.”
• China’s market regulator expanded scrutiny of the country’s ride-hailing sector, warning Didi Chuxing and nine other companies against price fixing and monopolizing user data.
• Lex Column: Marex Spectron hopes to cash in on renewed demand for raw materials, regardless of whether the market is seeing a new commodity supercycle or not; An upbeat revenue forecast from AAPL would once have been enough to send Foxconn shares on a rally—but the company must now pull its own weight; Global birthrates are down, but demand for fertility help has not disappeared.
• Comment: Under the Biden administration the US is shifting form leading to supporting in the Middle East, says Martin Indyk—but whether Washington’s pivot can survive the new Israeli-Palestinian crisis remains an open question.
NEW YORK POST
Saturday
• Unions and retail chains are at odds over the CDC face mask guidance, with the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union saying people who work in public facing jobs at supermarkets and other retailers will still need to be protected.
Sunday
• + F: Henry Ford’s great-great granddaughter, Alexandra Ford English, 33, who has an MBA from Harvard and an undergraduate degree from Stanford, will become the first woman in history to hold a seat on the automaker’s board.
• So-called green jobs are growing more popular, especially in the New York tri-state area—entering a word such as “environmental” into the job search engine at Indeed.com will return almost 270,000 results, with a wide range of job titles.